Bill Would Encourage Superbug Drugs

Antibiotic-Resistant Infections

November 04, 2011

The United States is more vulnerable to attacks from superbugs than from terrorists. Yet this nation does little to defend itself from new infections that resist antibiotics and kill tens of thousands of Americans every year.

The pipeline for new antibiotics was already running low when Pfizer announced in February that it would move its antibiotics lab from Groton to China, where, presumably, the company can produce drugs more cheaply and with less red tape. The announcement alarmed scientists concerned about deaths from MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant infections. They worry about China's quality control and how quickly the U.S. could get supplies.

Antibiotic discoveries have slowed to a trickle in part because weeklong Amoxicillin treatments (to name one example) are less lucrative than lifelong Lipitor regimens. Over the past three decades, there have been only two new classes of antibiotics developed. With few new weapons to fight ever-evolving pathogens, the U.S. could be at the mercy of a powerful new pathogen. A bug called NDM-1 that makes bacteria resistant to last-resort medications is widespread in India and has arrived on this continent.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal has, thankfully, stepped forward with a bill that would give drug companies incentives to invest in antibiotic research. His bill would double the length of time they could profit from antibiotics before patents expire. The bill would also fast-track FDA approvals.

The Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now Act has support on both sides of an often bitterly divided Congress. Critics say that, if anything, it should be even more generous in drug-company incentives to speed up research and development. Congress ought to speed up passage of this law. The need is getting urgent.